There are several ways to load multimedia files. This kind of data is provided in a raw format, so the most suitable data type to store this information in is: the Binary Large Object (BLOB). Both the LONG and LONG RAW are not considered in this discussion as it is not good practice to preserve these kinds of columns. The long data type is considered deprecated for the new features; it has been a constant throughout all the new releases, starting with 8.0. Most of the new features are supported for LOB data types, but not for LONG data types.

A LOB is a data type that stores a Large Object, and it can be of BLOB, Character Large Object(CLOB) , National Character Large Object(NCLOB) or BFILE specific data type. It is useful to employ large objects to store multimedia files (binary LOBs), large amounts of text such as descriptions, commentaries, or the particular case of XMLType columns. Text can also be specified in national character sets. There are two kinds...